Tuesday, 10 March 2009

Spam

The Fat Expat got hit by a content spammer today. Content spam is a constant annoyance for blog owners: if you choose not to use comment certification (all that entering 'buisfnark' from the picture before your comment is accepted), you have to tidy up after the jerks every now and then. It's an annoyance - particularly as they dump rubbish like commercials for property on recipes for fillet steak in red wine sauce.

To my delight, today's comment spammer was dork enough to have registered the website in his own daft name. A quick WHOIS database lookup tells us that his property website is registered to:

So, having his mobile number I called him up and let him know what I think of him, his website and his content spam. He claimed it wasn't his site. I pointed out that he was the administrator and the registrant and therefore liable for anything that happened in his name on that site. He said he'd just done a favour for a friend. I told him he was either remarkably naive or lying, but that I tended to drop down the slope towards the latter.

And then I posted a complaint with his contacts on The Fat Expat, the UAE Community Blog and this blog. I also put in a block request to Etisalat, which was pure badness on my part, but let's see what happens. The Etisalat complaint reference is 3712281.

I do hate spammers. But there's only one thing worse than a spammer - a dumb spammer. And you have to be pretty dumb to qualify!

Do, if you agree with me on the subject of spam, feel free to give Florin a call. His mobile's probably off by now, but you can always send him an email...

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Fake Plastic Souks

I write books, I consult on publishing, media and digital communications, I cook. I spend quite a lot of my time laughing and do try not to be a stick-waving, spittle-flecked angry old man. I fail in this occasionally.